after 9/11 to serve the kcountr. when you see this sort of background, general, how many baleses are there out there? how many times have we seen the story before? when the army looks at it, they re going to ask what happened to the chain of command? if he had these problems, why aren t they identified? why wasn t he worked with? why wasn t he counselled? no matter what chain you are, someone above you is supposed to be following you, bringing you, helping you along, dealing with these situations. truth is the volunteer army has done incredible work in these two wars. no one expected when we created this army in the late 1970s that it would sustain itself through ten years of combat. it has. it s taken a very heavy toll on people like sergeant bales and his family. on that point, general are there other soldiers like this? yes, there are. it seems like a very common background, the way he was
and then obama president obama made the right decision, and now he s making the right decision about bringing them home. now they re saying, go big or go home. what is it, guys? what is it? our troops did a great job in bringing bin laden to justice finally and now it is time for our troops to start coming home. the narrative of the story changes when we have the story of the u.s. soldier, sergeant robert bales, accused of killing 16 civilians. his repeated tours of duty, the financial woes, the balance he was trying to make between his personal life and his professional life being a hero and soldier for this country. so how he didn t want to go for another tour, we don t know all the background of that, but what are your thoughts of the massacre, the impact on the war it self and the impact this has on the biggest conversation we have in supporting our troops once they get home. what sergeant bales did is reprehensible and it s horrific and it s an absolute tragedy and my heart
at 2% in iowa a couple of weeks before the election. he s won 10 states. and done it with a fraction of the money and the organization. with very little money, very little organization, and against the death star of american politics. that is amazing. if i may ask a question. i wanted to ask you, senator hi, good to see you. hi. i wanted to ask you about afghanistan. given everything that s happened in not only the last year but certainly in the last couple of weeks, and what president karzai has just said about forcing american troops back onto base and out of villages, which is really their purpose of being out and winning hearts and minds, and this tragedy of course with sergeant bales, do you think we should rethink the mission? what would you do if you were commander in chief sitting in the oval office right now? t well, sort of two scenarios. the first scenario, if i was commander in chief we wouldn t have the policy we have in place right now, which is to withdraw
described, what we understand of who he is now. in fact, there s been some accounts as you heard john yang s report there, bales being very calm, a person who pressed new recruits to be respectful of afgh afghans and their patrols there were no reports of alcohol or other issues while on duty. so are we missing the symptoms, ptsd or others, or are we ignoring them? well, i think that the army has a mission to do, and the mission comes first, and that s what every soldier is taught and that s what the lead remembers taught. mission, take care of your troops. but the mission comes first. and so the army has had the mission. it has a limited number of troops. it s still on a volunteer basis. and so the same troops have gone back again and again and again. and on the one handy this gives you a really experienced, capable group of leaders at the tactical level who know how to respond exactly as did sergeant bales when he saw someone about to launch an rpg at his vehicle. you bring up an
message which can also mean diplomacy. superdescribing recent rolling stone articles that look at the pr essence of mr. beals position basically with seal team six. tell us about that and any responses you have. we did a very troubling story on a group of soldiers that called themselves the kill team, u.s. soldiers in afghanistan who went out and systematically hunted down afghan civilians, killed them and then mutilated their bodies taking body parts atrophy if is, in one case the first victim was a 15-year-old boy. it just so happens this is platoon is from the same brigade as sergeant bales and was based out of the same base in the united states, joint base lewis-mcchord. we found photographic evidence at the time that suggested that these crimes by the kill team went beyond then one platoon. the pentagon tried to portray it as a rogue platoon much as they re saying is the sergeant now is a rogue soldier. but the evidence really suggested that it went farther than that and that o